Docker and Singularity are software container systems that allow you to write applications that can be deployed on any compute environment. This article explains our base lab docker image and how you can use it to run your programs/scripts.
Build Status: 
See the install docker guide. You want to install the Community Edition.
Docker is availiable through Docker for Mac. Simply download and drop the app into your applications folder.
Haven't done testing with Windows, but it could work in theory...
Our lab docker image is hosted on docker hub and the Dockerfile is hosted on our lab GitHub. You should create an account if you aim to make derivatives of this image.
To pull the image into your local docker repository, you use the docker pull command:
docker pull vanandrew/dglabimgThis will pull the latest image. You can also pull specific versions of the image:
docker pull vanandrew/dglabimg:v1.00As of v1.00 of the lab docker image, these are the following programs availiable:
These programs are also runnable on the image through outside mounts
If you think a particular program should be in the image that is not already in here, you can send me a request.
Running the image can be done with docker run with the -it and --rm options (See the docker run documentation for the full details). The -i flag keeps a STDIN pipe open to your container instance and allows you to submit commands to it. Similarly, the -t flag opens a pseudo-tty terminal interface. The --rm flag cleans up your container after you exit.
docker run --it --rm vanandrew/dglabimgThis will spawn a software container running the image that will be cleaned up automatically once you exit.
root@079c8713aca6:/# If you see this prompt in your terminal, congratulations! You're officially running a self-contained Ubuntu system on your machine. You can do whatever you want to the image (try rm -rf /, if you're brave enough :^) ), and it will not affect your host system at all.
Having an isolated system is nice, but what's the use if you can't access data located on the host?
You can accomplish this through Docker's volume mounting feature. It will allow you to map a host directory to a directory on docker. This is done through the -v [host directory]:[container directory] option:
docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd -P)/Downloads:/mnt/downloads -v $(pwd -P)/Documents:/mnt/documents vanandrew/dglabimg
# or to go onto multiple lines use \
docker run -it --rm \
-v $(pwd)/Downloads:/mnt/downloads \
-v $(pwd)/Documents:/mnt/documents \
vanandrew/dglabimgThis mounts my /User/vanandrew/Downloads directory to /mnt/downloads and /User/vanandrew/Documents directory to /mnt/documents. It should be noted that the -v option only accepts absolute paths, so don't use ./ or ~ when constructing your path.
By default, docker does not forward the x display of the host to allow for graphics rendering. To use graphical applications, you can grab a copy of my docker_x11 script to setup x11 forwarding for your system. Simply clone the dglabdocker repo, and add the directory to your PATH variable:
git clone https://github.com/DosenbachGreene/dglabdocker.git
# You can add this to your .bashrc
export PATH=${PATH}:$(pwd)/dglabdockerThe docker_x11 script will automatically setup your environment for X11 forwarding. (On Mac, carefully read the instructions to enable indirect GLX). The script essentially runs the equivalent of docker run -it --rm, so to run an image, the full command would be:
docker_x11 vanandrew/dglabimg:v1.00And mounting directories is simply:
docker_x11 -v mount/me:/I/am/Mounted vanandrew/dglabimg:v1.00To use MATLAB in our docker image, you must mount a Linux MATLAB install to /opt/MATLAB. From there, you can simply type matlab to start MATLAB.
docker run -it --rm -v /path/to/MATLAB/:/opt/MATLAB vanandrew/dglabimg:v1.00
OR
docker_x11 -v /path/to/MATLAB/:/opt/MATLAB vanandrew/dglabimg:v1.00I have uploaded a MATLAB 2017b install on Box for use with our Docker image, but due to licensing issues, you must on our university network to use it.
You can use the -nojvm option when you start MATLAB, if you don't need X11 and graphics (Though if you run matlab without forwarding X11, you will get the same effect).
TO-DO
You can extend the base lab image by creating a derivative image using our lab image as a base. This is done through a Dockerfile. An example like this:
FROM vanandrew/dglabimg:v1.00
MAINTAINER Andrew Van <vanandrew@wustl.edu>
RUN apt-get install -y zshThis simple example shows me creating a derivative image from the base lab image, then installing zsh.
In order to turn this Dockerfile into an actual image, I use the docker build command:
docker build . -t vanandrew/simpletestWhere . is the path to the directory, not file, of where the Dockerfile is located. The -t option specifies the tag option, where I can give the image a specific name. Here, I also namespace it by my docker hub username. This allows me to easily push the image to my dockerhub, where I can share it with others!
Pushing an image to dockerhub is accomplished with the docker push command:
docker push vanandrew/simpletestTO-DO